Dark Ocean

by Nick Elliott

  And he would have written the cryptic note for me before he went out, perhaps knowing his life was in danger. What was that note about? Eastfield must be a place and 176? A quantity, a date, a location? Was it connected to the wreck site of the Lady Monteith? It certainly didn’t have a nautical sound to it. Claire had told me that he knew I would be working on that case for the CMM. Perhaps he surmised that I would make sense of these clues he’d left.

  My mind was spinning but at least I’d warmed up. I stepped out onto the terrace beside the guest rooms where I’d showered. It had started to rain but still the sun broke through and a rainbow had appeared arching across the bay. Was it a portent? And if so for good or ill? I wondered what Sammy would make of it. Was I letting his warning get under my skin?

  Chapter 6

  Back in Piraeus I checked on the Toyama Maru. She was built in Japan in the early thirties. She displaced eighteen hundred tons fully loaded, was 233 feet long with a beam of 36 feet and a draught of 14 feet. Her two Mitsubishi diesels generated 1,100 horsepower giving her a cruising speed of 13.5 knots. Her flank speed would have been a bit more than that.

  This old girl that was more a ship than a yacht had originally been built for a high profile American oil tycoon who had named her Texas Beauty. Nowadays her owners were simply listed as Ocean Investments Inc. of George Town, her port of registry in the Caymans.

  Furthermore, the skipper didn’t believe in the statutory requirement of keeping his Automatic Identification System switched on. There was no trace of her whereabouts which would have been apparent had she been using it. The International Maritime Organisation's Safety of Life at Sea Convention requires AIS to be fitted aboard international voyaging ships with a gross tonnage of 300 or more. The Toyama Maru was close to 2,500 gross tons. For sure she’d have been be fitted with AIS.

  But, confusingly, there was another Toyama Maru. She was listed as a Japanese troop transport sailing around the Far East during World War II. On 29th June 1944, this Toyama Maru was transporting over 6,000 men of the Japanese 44th Independent Mixed Brigade when she was torpedoed and sunk by a US submarine in the Nansei Shoto, off Taira Jima. 5,400 soldiers and crew members were killed during the sinking, although 600 others managed to get off the ship, making this one of the worst maritime disasters in history.

  Was there a connection between the two ships, I wondered? I checked on Eastfield too but could see nothing to connect the name to the case. There was an Eastfield College in the States and an Eastfield lighting company in Shenzhen neither of which provided a pointer.

  ‘So what’s going on, Angus?’ Zoe demanded. Zoe was my assistant, or the office manager in charge of everything in light of her boss’s frequent absences, depending on whose point of view you took. I didn’t mind her presumption. She was twenty-five, blond, beautiful, and going out with a wealthy Greek twice her age. She was studying law in her spare time and when I was travelling Zoe kept correspondence and our case files as up to date as could be expected. She was indispensable.

  ‘I was hoping you could tell me that, Zoe. Why don’t you give me a run-down on the case list.’ I’d been away for a couple of weeks. We’d been in daily contact by phone and email but I needed her nuanced version of events now I was back.

  ‘I meant Kyrios Alastair. He was your friend. How did he die?’

  ‘We don’t know yet, Zoe. It might have been a heart attack.’

  ‘He was healthy I thought. And he wasn’t old.’

  ‘He was seventy-six actually, Zoe, so getting on.’

  ‘Yes, but not old, old.’

  Greeks perceive aging differently from many Westerners. Old age is honoured and celebrated, and respect for elders is central to the family, and to your business. The word Gerondas means “old man” and is a respectful form of address.

  ‘I know, it’s odd,’ I conceded. I had to be careful with what I told Zoe. She was a critical part of my business as a marine claims investigator but she knew nothing of my work with the IMTF on the Lady Monteith case. And the previous evening Claire had called. She’d received the autopsy report on Alastair’s death.

  ‘You were right,’ she’d said on an encrypted line. ‘Death by arsenicosis. He’d eaten meat and drunk red wine. They found traces of it in his digestive system. Enough to kill him within an hour or two they reckon - circulatory collapse caused by arsenic trioxide poisoning.’

  ‘So what do our wise men at the IMTF make of all this?’

  ‘Give them time. They're working on it but for now they’re rather depending on you and I to come up with the answers. They’re so preoccupied with counter-terrorism these days and Alastair was a bit of a lone wolf, like you. He pretty much ran their other activities himself – anything maritime that wasn’t considered piracy or a terrorism threat was his domain and he’d call on their resources as and when he needed them.’

  ‘Okay. Any thoughts on the choice of poison? Does it give us a clue?’

  ‘Not much. Arsenic trioxide has long been of biomedical interest to Chinese and Japanese practioners – it was used in traditional Chinese medicine for over five thousand years, but not surprisingly lost its appeal due to its toxicity. That’s as much as I can tell you at the moment.’

  ‘How about the Lady Monteith case?’ I asked. ‘What’s the latest on Buchan’s vanishing act?’

  ‘Susanna Buchan wants you back there. She seems to think you can help her find him. Of course she doesn’t know of the IMTF’s interest in the case.’

  ‘Does Buchan have kidnap and ransom cover?’

  ‘No. The CMM has offered it to him through Lloyd’s from time to time, but Monty’s always said the Sinclair Buchan fleet doesn’t trade in pirate-infested waters. Nowadays the high risk areas are off west and east Africa and his tonnage is trading mainly between Australia and north Asia – to China mostly with their bulk carriers. The South China Sea is not free of piracy as you know but he didn’t anticipate needing it. It’s not cheap and anyway, we’re not even sure he’s been kidnapped.’

  ‘What are the Hong Kong police saying?’

  ‘She hasn’t reported it, for now anyway. She says they don’t want the publicity. Her father’s a prominent member of Hong Kong society. And she’s quite a socialite herself I gather.’

  ‘So she’s on her own on this then.’

  ‘So it would seem, except she wants you back there, as does the IMTF – so you better get moving. You can leave Zoe in charge can’t you? She’s such a bright girl.’

  ‘Yes, she’s so bright she’ll take over the business before I know it.’

  ‘Well at least you can rely on her.’

  ‘By the way, when I dived off Alastair's jetty the other day I saw something, a little dinghy with the name of the mother vessel on her stern. It was lying on the bottom.’

  ‘So what was the name?’

  ‘Toyama Maru. She's an old yacht built in the thirties. Mostly sails around the Far East but suddenly she shows up off Alastair's island it seems. I've checked her out. I think Alastair was poisoned aboard the Toyama Maru, escaped in the tender and rowed back to his jetty before collapsing.’

  ‘So why didn't you tell me at the time?’

  ‘Claire, you've shared nothing about this case and nothing of any use about the IMTF either. I'm feeling my way in the dark. I get the sense that I'm not being shown the full picture. It works both ways. It's about mutual trust and transparency. I'm sorry. I should have told you. Now I am and I want to know everything you know about this case from here on. Is that reasonable?’

  ‘You've made yourself clear, Angus. Stick to the plan and I'll make sure you're in the loop. The IMTF is very much “need to know” as you can understand, but we don't want you feeling left in the dark to the extent it affects your on the spot judgement.’

  ‘Good.’

  She paused. ‘How about Eleni? Are you missing her?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said looking round the flat, my flat. But it didn’t look much like a home anymore without Eleni�
��s stuff scattered around. ‘I am.’

  Chapter 7

  Susanna Buchan was staring out of her office window. ‘Of course he’d tell me,’ she said in answer to my question about her father’s absence. ‘We always know where either one of us is going – for business or otherwise.’

  She turned back to me. Despite the concern on her face she still looked very attractive. I found myself wondering what her story was. She didn’t look Eurasian and there was something about her which wasn’t quite Chinese either, at least not Han Chinese. ‘He’s been gone a week. No messages. No replies to my texts, voicemails, emails.’

  ‘Where does he live?’ I asked, still feeling a little jetlagged after the flights from Athens.

  ‘The family home is in Mount Cameron Road. I have an apartment there too.’

  ‘But is that where he calls home? I mean does he live there all the time?’ I sensed she was being evasive.

  She hesitated. ‘Let’s sit shall we.’ We moved over to the L-shaped sofa arrangement where there was a pot of coffee. The office was in noticeable contrast to her father’s. Hers was light and airy and the tone one of muted pastels. Fresh flowers were strategically placed around the room and in one corner stood a huge bamboo plant.

  ‘He does move around. We both do. But he never goes off the radar like this.’

  ‘What do you mean, he moves around?’

  She poured coffee. ‘He has his female friends – several. I don’t delve into that side of his life.’

  ‘We might have to,’ I said.

  ‘Since my step-mother died my father has sought the company of several women but none of them are serious relationships. I mean I don’t think they are long-term. But even when he’s with them we keep in touch.

  ‘He doesn’t like feeling he’s being judged or controlled, by me especially. And I respect that. We’re close nevertheless,’ she added.

  ‘Okay. But you think his absence, shall we call it, has to do with the Lady Monteith case?’

  ‘I don’t know. It just seems odd that his disappearance, as I’m calling it, coincides with his resuming the search for the ship. That’s all. He was – is - obsessed with the case.’

  ‘Where are the files?’

  ‘There’s nothing much on the digital files, just the email exchanges with the CMM. You saw most of the material when you were here before. But there were other documents. He kept them to himself. I can find no trace of them. He often takes work home with him. He likes to work from home. I’ve searched the house, his study, bedroom. Nothing.’

  ‘So call the police.’

  She sighed. ‘I can’t do that, at least not now.’ She saw my questioning look. ‘We’re a prominent family. We’ve been here a hundred and fifty years. If his disappearance got out it would create a media frenzy and the whole matter would become impossible to handle. I want you to do some scouting about first. Then I’ll call the police if we don’t find him.’

  ‘I’m not that kind of investigator and I don’t know Hong Kong that well either,’ I said. ‘You’d be better off with a local private detective. There must be some ex-cops you can call.’

  ‘Same problem as if I call the police. It would get out one way or another.’ She paused. ‘There is one my father knew and used sometimes. I met him a few times too.’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  She paused, thinking. ‘I’m trying to remember.’ Then, ‘That’s it. Eastfield his name was, Ronnie Eastfield.’

  I nearly fell off the sofa. ’Tell me about him.’

  ‘My father said he was a good cop years ago. But he got caught up in the first wave of ICAC arrests – you know, the Independent Commission Against Corruption? Godber was the first to fall, then Hunt. Ronnie Eastfield went down shortly thereafter. My father said they were all at it in those days. That kind of corruption was endemic. Tea money: a brown envelope on your desk every Friday morning. Not just the police, everyone in one way or another was at it. But they hit the police first to set an example. Eastfield served seven years, but unlike others who went skulking off to Spain or wherever, he toughed it out by staying on here after he’d served his time. He set up as a private eye. He’ll be well into his sixties by now so I’m not sure whether he’s still active. I only just thought of him, but he did some work for us years ago.’

  ‘He’d be a starting point,’ I said. ‘Where do I find him?’

  ‘He’s up in the New Territories somewhere. Wait.’ She picked up the phone. A minute later the Chinese woman who had delivered the coffee came in with a slip of paper.

  ‘Thanks, Esther,’ she said then picked up the phone. The call must have gone to voicemail. She left a message asking Eastfield to call her. Then she passed the piece of paper to me. It had an address in Sai Kung and a mobile phone number.

  ‘You know where that is?’

  ‘I can find it.’

  ‘When he returns my call I’ll tell him you’ll be in touch.’

  You bet I will, I thought. Surely this was the break I'd been waiting for: the answer to half of Alastair Marshall’s cryptic clue.

  Chapter 8

  The sun was going down by the time I found Ronnie Eastfield’s place. He lived on the top floor of an old four-story apartment block in Sai Kung town, out on the peninsula that bore the same name.

  Susanna Buchan had made contact with him so I was expected. Ronnie’s home was basic. The floors were tiled and a few cheap rugs were carelessly scattered about. The living room was furnished with a black, faux leather three-piece suite. There was a television in one corner and a cheap dining table and chairs in another. There wasn’t room for much else and very little thought had been given to layout. Interior design was clearly not one of Ronnie’s interests.

  He showed me out onto a small balcony that led off the main room and left me to admire the view which was probably why he chose to live here. It looked out across Hebe Haven, a bay filled with small craft: sampans, junks, motor cruisers of different shapes and sizes. On the far side of the bay, half a mile away, were waterfront restaurants, their lights glittering in the gathering dusk. Beyond them, looking south, were the hills of Kowloon, the nine dragons forming a barrier between the New Territories and the city’s sprawl of Kowloon, the harbour and Hong Kong Island.

  ‘I like your view,’ I said as he re-joined me carrying two bottles of San Miguel.

  ‘Yeah. Pity about the smell but this place does me alright.’ I hadn’t mentioned the stench coming off the water. ‘Same smell as comes off Kai Tak Nullah’ he went on. ‘When the airport was there the planes’ turbo fans would suck that smell into the cabin. Raw sewage and God knows what else. The smell of money people called it.’

  He was a dishevelled looking character. What was left of his grey hair was swept back off his forehead but wisps of it flew about in all directions. His straggly eyebrows were still black. Beneath them, perched on his nose, was a pair of large steel-framed glasses from some bygone age. He had a grey pallor about him and a sheen of sweat covered his skin. And he hadn’t shaved very carefully either. He probably weighed two-hundred pounds although he was no more than five-ten. His shirt was tight across his belly to the point that it looked as if his beer gut might burst out unannounced. Ronnie Eastfield had seen better days.

  We drank our beer standing there looking out over the bay.

  ‘So Susanna Buchan’s filled you in has she?’ I asked.

  ‘About her father’s vanishing act? Yes. Not much to go on.’

  ‘She thinks it has to do with a Sinclair Buchan ship, the Lady Monteith. She sank during the war.’

  ‘Yes, she mentioned that.’

  ‘Know anything about it?’

  He took another swig of his beer without answering my question.

  ‘Ronnie, there’re a couple of issues here. One is finding Monty Buchan and the other is finding the Lady Monteith. The two are connected and they’ve asked me to look into both.’

  ‘Yes, she told me you insure their ships from some outfit in
Scotland. Is that it?’

  ‘That’s correct, yes.’

  He placed his beer on a small metal table, lit a cigarette and blew smoke out in the general direction of the bay. Then, for the first time he looked me in the eye. ‘I knew your father you know. I knew him well. He was a good friend. I met your mother and you and your sister too. You were just kids. You wouldn’t remember.’

  I just stared at him.

  ‘Even when I went down your dad used to visit me in Stanley. He didn’t need to do that. He’d bring me cigarettes, and news of what was going on outside. Stanley Prison wasn’t the homeliest of places to spend seven years of your life, I can assure you.

  ‘When he died in that fucking landslide I cried. I cried for him and for you and the rest of your family.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’ I was taken aback.

  ‘How would you?’ He shuffled off leaving me to contemplate what he’d just said. When he came back he was carrying two more beers.

  ‘How would you?’ he said again. ‘I got out a few months after it happened. I vowed I’d stay on in Hong Kong and the reason for that had a lot to do with what happened to your dad and your family. You were whisked away to Scotland by your uncle, but the memories were left – the ghosts. And I felt guilty, that I’d let him down as well as myself. I was his junior by many years and he treated me a bit like a son I always felt. Your dad wasn’t just a straight copper amongst bent ones, he was smart too. And now I’m going to tell you something you wouldn’t learn from anyone else. Your dad was working on something big. And fucking dangerous too. And it has to do with Monty Buchan’s Lady Monteith, or so I reckon.’

  He looked out across the bay, well into his second large bottle of San Mig now. ‘Ever heard of Golden Lily?’

  ‘No,’ I said still trying to process what he’d just been saying about his relationship with my father.